Counting

I don't mean to make this a "Stuff ASB Likes" blog...but being that life has been sort of in the SLOW lane lately, that's about all the content I got. That and a huge pile of stress that made me wake up at 4:30 in the morning. Stress is induced almost entirely from work and the incessant Twittering and Social Media-ing that I am being required to do which is making me want to quit and sit quietly in a room not typing or contacting ANY STRANGERS AS IF THEY WERE MY FRIENDS for many, many months.

On the good side, I had a fun lunch with the only other Jew (and writer!) I've met in this mountain town. She made me worry that academic life is not for me though. TOO COMPETITIVE. Anyhoo. Just after that I went to see "Then She Found Me" which is a touching, funny and oddly complex movie about a woman whose life falls to pieces, and then she meets Colin Firth...and her mother turns out to be Bette Midler. Well, those things are kind of disasters too. It's based on an Elinor Lipman novel...although I heard Helen Hunt on Fresh Air a few months ago saying that it is very LOOSELY based on the novel. You may watch the trailer now:

In other news, am oddly indifferent to the outcome of my FAVE show "The Bachelorette" (the real question is: why are all the smart women I know totally obsessed with this show? Does it have something to do with the psychology of how we pick the people we love?) but am very SAD at the untimely disappearance of my favorite new blog IHateGreenBeans.com just when she could have posted a pithy response to the whole thing. SO am hoping that that returns shortly.

So, Merriam-Webster, my favorite dictionary for many reasons including its name has announced its Top 10 Words of the Year. #1? w00t. Yes, those are ZEROS in the middle of the word.

Definition for those among us not well-versed in the vernacular of the kids:

expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay"

w00t! I won the contest!

So, I will say w00t! for Atonement the movie. Mostly because I actually got to see it (damn you "limited release"--they really MEAN that when they say it, not that I ever UNDERSTOOD what that meant because I always lived in the place that was the main center of the limited-ness) but also because it is quite faithful to the book. And aside from some really BAD juxtapositions of pool imagery and use of opera in the first hour, it is lovely. Almost as lovely as the book.

Reminds me, however, that Mr. McEwan likes to write about really EVIL kids, this is most apparent in The Cement Garden which is literally the most fucked up book I have ever read (and that includes Flowers in the Attic).

It was a lazy weekend around here...mostly we just ate and watch movies. Among them were: Kicking and Screaming which is a coming-of-age movie about four friends who just don't want to leave the town they went to college in (Joel loves this movie--is anyone surprised?), Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome which is just ridiculous and stars Tina Turner, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, I had never seen this and it is super entertaining AND Return to Oz, which is so creepy (we're watching it as I write this) I can barely look at it. It is supposed to be a movie for CHILDREN!!! It makes Willy Wonka look totally normal.

I would like also to point out that three of those four movies have monkeys in them. Which makes them great.

I also finished reading the romance novel for Beth and the first Rashi's Daughter's book, Jocheved, which was good. Interesting Talmud stuff. I was surprised to find how dirty it was though! Way dirtier than Beth's romance novel!!!

Joel just told me about the best trailer ever for this move called Lars and the Girl (which will never come to this town...but thought I'd tell all of you who live within 2 hours of an independent movie theater about it). It is about a man with an imaginary, mannequin girlfriend. Watch the trailer!!!

I am excited about it and also sad b/c if I were ever to write a movie, it would probably be this movie.

I guess I better think of another idea...although I guess there's always room for more. As George Singleton so wisely said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "everyone has a story about a mannequin."

Today is the first day of summer for me. I still have to finish revising a paper and input my grades, but that's it. Then I need to pack for Israel. Already, I'm happy. I went running this morning, wrote this afternoon, worked in between. If only I could make a little more money at this, life would be grand.

Last night, we went to see In the Land of Women, which I liked. Mostly because I had thought it would be a romantic comedy (and my fears were ALMOST proved right when Meg Ryan showed up in it being goofy) and then it wasn't. It was kind of a stock story--boy loses girl, boy runs away from life, meets quirky people in new place, things happen, then has to go back to first place, realizing that maybe the girl wasn't so great after all.

While the New York Times said that the movie was a "meek, mopey comedy" and "the film equivalent of a
sensitive emo band" (I still hate using the word emo to describe anything). I thought it was kind of touching and funny. Maybe I identify. I don't know. I liked it though. And Olympia Dukakis plays a crazy old lady to the fullest extent that a crazy old lady can be played.

Other things you need to know are that The Road is amazing. Read it now. Before it gets Oprah-fied.

Also, I am about to be in a feud with another one of my neighbors. I already hate the woman next door because her alarm is horribly loud, so loud that it wakes me up, and it is always playing Whitney Houston or something equivalently horrible. A few weeks ago, I banged on the wall on a Saturday morning. Now I think she is kind of afraid of me. But she also hasn't stopped setting the alarm. The only thing about it is that it isn't regular in its going off--she gets up at different times every day, so I don't quite know what to do about it. So, I'm kind of just dealing.

Now the horrible "vintage" (and when I say vintage, I mean it in the WORST possible sense of the word, that thing is a pile of shit) Porsche-driving neighbor is officially torturing me as he parks his hideous beast of a car outside my window and STARTS IT AT 5:40 AM. And this SHAKES MY HOUSE. The whole thing. The floors. The walls. The bed. Mind you, the building is MADE OF CONCRETE. I hate him. I don't even know what to do, I'm so livid.

In the spirit of the fact that I get to see Strangers With Candy tonight (I know, I know, it came out six months ago in New York. It's probably already on DVD for goodness sakes. DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THIS. Because then I will get started on the fact that I want to see Little Children. And DESPITE the fact that Little Children is only playing on FIVE screens. I KNOW FOR A FACT that one of those screens is within walking distance of my old apartment. Now, it is also true that a gigantic crane recently fell on my old apartment, SO it might be a good think that I no longer live there. But despite its proximity to dangerous cranes it is also proximitous (not a word? should be) to movies.)

In other news, everyone should read White Noise by Don Delillo right away. It's very good.

Finally, I need to give a shoutout to my fabulous sister who gave me this t-shirt. Who said that Steinbergs can't wear yellow? We can wear yellow! If only we could get boobs like the one under this tshirt, well, then, we would be lucky wouldn't we?

Actually, that's a lie. I definitely look DIFFERENT in the tshirt from this model, but I'm okay with it. Funny story. Once, I went to Club Med (that's not the funny part, but I know that it is mildly incongruous with my personality, but I was bored and cold, what was I supposed to do). And AT Club Med was a woman with huge boobs. And everyone talked about them almost all the time. And about how they were fake. And then one day she comes out in a t-shirt that says "They're Real." Which everyone talked about. And I told her that I thought it was a great t-shirt. And SHE said that it would be even funnier if I wore it. Which was probably true. But I don't think it would have been discussed as much as when she wore it.

It looks like all the yelling about where people went to college totally exhausted me. Also, lots of back-to-school partying has been mildly distracting. Also, I'm reading this book called Rides of the Midway which J. gave me and which is really good. It is literary and also there are guns and drugs. I think that's a hard combination. Rare, really.

I kind of stopped reading Fall On Your Knees...it started getting super creepy--a mom killing her daughter and then the sister killing the baby of the daughter who was killed....was kind of upsetting . But I might try to finish it before it is due back at the library this week. After that, I'll probably just be doing reading for school so my time of leisure reading is probably over for a little while. How sad.

I will also be watching Season 2 of Lost when it comes out on DVD on September 5th which will cut into my reading time. In watching news, I just watched this crazy movie called I Love Your Work that the Temporary Southern Belle and I saw at the video store when she was here. It was kind of crazy and circular structured, which you may know that I enjoy, it was also really multi-layered in a way that was potentially interesting but also kind of confusing. I must say that watching the beginning of the movie again after I had watched it helped a lot...I think I liked it, but I can also see why it got terrible reviews. There were a LOT of shots of Giovanni Ribisi looking upset and also kind of stilted dialogue. But I did like it.

Last night at one of the parties, we played kickball. So, everyone here knows that I am literally the least athletic person in the entire world. The other team figured it out pretty quickly and started only kicking the ball to me! Jerkstores! So then I switched to catcher and everyone left me alone. I am, by the way, an excellent cheerleader and I think that will be my role at future athletic events.

At another party, we discussed the fact that there is a swimming pool where I live and that reminded me that I have been meaning to go into the swimming pool to try to teach myself how to swim. What's weird is that I do know how to swim, but I don't swim properly so I can't really swim laps, although if you tossed me overboard from some boat, I wouldn't drown. So, it turns out that I can swim a bit more than I thought I could, but I don't know how to breathe when I do the crawl, so I can only swim that for as long as I can hold my breath and then I need to stand up, breathe, and start swimming again (this is fine since my pool is only 3 - 5 feet deep). But I think I'm going to need to learn how to breathe. I mean. It's kind of ridiculous. But I am scared to breathe. I don't know what I am scared of, but when I have to, my body freaks out and won't do it.

It feels kind of ridiculous to categorize the fact that I just went to see Talladega Nights under "Film"...but I did and I will. It was kind of hilarious, if a bit long and slightly awkward. But Will Ferrell always makes me laugh, and John C. Riley was pretty damn good! And, "in the words of Colonel Sanders, "I'm too drunk to taste this chicken."" Is a classic line. It was oft repeated yesterday at the Fiddler's Convention (at which I mostly drank beer and ate smoked brisket) for good reason.

The best thing about it though was that there is a movie coming out soon called Stranger Than Fiction which is about a writer (Emma Thompson) writing about a character (Will Ferrell) who is actually real and she is narrating his life and it's driving him crazy. It seems fantastic. I can't wait. My three favorite things: writing, Will Ferrell and embedded postmodern narratives. If only it can live up to the third thing, it will be the best movie ever made.

I went with my Jewish friend here to see Keeping up with the Steins, a ridiculous but sort of touching and sometimes hilarious movie about a bar mitzvah. At the beginning, it kind of feels like a movie version of My Super Sweet 16, but keep watching, it stops being like that pretty quickly.

If you like movies about Jews, and I KNOW that some of you do, you'll have to see this. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll think, "Doris Roberts plays a good Jewish grandma!"

Joanna Scott: Follow Me: A NovelA truly lovely novel about family secrets and the unexpected path that life takes us on. I am amazed at what Joanna Scott can pack into one sentence, one paragraph. It is more than I could imagine doing in a whole book. She is a master.

Lionel Shriver: We Need to Talk About Kevin: A Novel (P.S.)There are some books, like Native Son, that you recognize as good but it is difficult to say that you LIKE because they are so utterly disturbing that your heart aches for them. This is how I feel about this book. I see the goodness, but I can't say I liked this book. In fact, reading it was excruciating. (For those who don't know, it is from the point of view of the mother of a school shooter and chronicles his evil life.) On the other hand, I couldn't look away. I can't say I recommend it because the experience is just unpleasant. But on the other hand, it is fascinating. That is all.

Luis Alberto Urrea: Into the Beautiful North: A NovelI have to admit that I never got into Urrea's other books, although I love the KIND of books he writes. But this one grabbed me from the start and did not let go. He is able to find beauty in ugliness in a way that I really admire.

Lucinda Rosenfeld: I'm So Happy for You: A novel about best friendsThis is one of those books that as I was reading it, I was thinking: "why aren't I smart enough to write like this?" She's able to balance really lovely writing with a very relatable plot. I mean, there is an almost-too-real quality to this one that made me have to look away. And yet, you can't. Because all of her characters are so great and in so much trouble that you must, must, must know what happens to them.

Michael Connelly: The ScarecrowSuch a good read. Michael Connelly is able to weave together an amazing (and super intelligent) plot with the decline of the newspaper industry and a creepy cyberstalker. There's even a bit of a love story. Something for everyone. Read this one. For real.

Tess Callahan: April & Oliver: A NovelWhat a moving and suspenseful story of relationships and how childhood mistakes/experiences can influence one's adult life. And the ending is just gorgeous. This is not a story for the faint of heart though, it's as much about love as it is about violence and also about where the two converge. I adored it and am about to read it again because there is a symmetry to the story that I think would do well for a second reading.

George Pelecanos: The Way HomeAm constantly amazed by the depth of Pelecanos' writing. His characters are so real, their dilemmas so relatable. Anyone who has had a child who has ever gotten in any trouble will relate to the parents in this novel. And any person who has ever given their parents any grief will relate as well. SO, anyone who is a child of parents or a parent of a child should read this. (That means everyone, right?)